LOBBS

Ok, I know why Revell packs the pickup bed inside the cab of their '99 Silverado kit (space saving in the box). That being said it's still rather agravating that they would be building in a warpage issue by doing so. I pulled my project out of the drawer hoping to get back into finishing it. I had filled the taillights by gluing in the original lenses, puttying them in and priming. I had spread the bedsides out to the width of the lenses when I did this but over time the bedsides pulled back in and cracked the glue joints and body putty. What I'm looking for are ideas as to what has worked for you guys in similar situations. I was thinking about adding shims between the wall of the inner bed and outer bedsides or using a spreader plate and heat to take out the "memory" of the plastic. TIA

First off, I love the new C6 Vette especially the Z06. It looks great from every angle except (in my opinion) the dead-on face shot. It's almost as if GM stylists took the day off and the engineers took over. That rectangular slot for air intake has just hit me wrong since the first time I saw the new Vette. I started the Revell kit awhile back, got the body painted but just never could get over that snozz. The new Vette is a "bottom-breather" so I'm a little limited in my restyling efforts but here is my idea #1. Just after nasal surgery: Option #1: This is more of an evolutionary look from the C4 and C5 Vettes. It's hard to tell from the pic but the downward curve of the outer edges matches that of the headlights (I simply taped a couple of spare headlight covers from the snap kit to the back and cut the tape). The driving lights will be flush-mounted to the fascia in the outer corners of the opening (think the front turn signals from the '70-'72 Vettes) but I haven't mocked up the necessary buckets and lenses. I hope to have Option #2 mocked up tomorrow. It will be more in the style of the early C3's. Three openings (2 larger outside grills and a smaller center one) across the nose with the exception that the "bumper spars" will be slightly canted to follow the fender line down. This will also require that I raise the upper line of the opening to thin the leading edge of the nose and more closely match the proportions of the early C3's face. Opinions always welcome

Other than the stock grille and decals is this a straight re-issue of the WaveRider truck?? I haven't seen a picture of the kit other than the box-art shot so I can't see if they tooled up new wheels for it or not. Funny thing, this kit is listed out first with the stock truck re-issue to follow but the LHS has had the stock truck for a couple of weeks and none of these. TIA

7-gallon Campbell-Hausfeld tank, water trap and Speed-Aire regulator. I got the regulator and oil filled guage from my old job's scrap pile. I don't use the tank much anymore but if necessary I just transfer the whole set-up back and forth between the two. Hope this helps.

Thanks Bill. Glad to see the '99 Silverado Custom back and it looks like they've gone away from the horrendous custom front end in the WaveRider release. The '66 Elky will also be great to have back as mine has some damage on the rear quarter that may be difficult to repair. Now if Revell will add some more styles to their 20" wheels series with these new releases I'd be ecstatic. I picked up a couple of issues of the '69 Vette for the wheels although I have at least a half dozen of the previous releases of the '68 Vert/'69 Coupe tooling.

I know I've heard of a couple of possible reissues but can't for the life of me find them again TIA

Definitely my favorite take on the new Camaro to date!! Nice job John

All the builds on my to-do list are heavy with the pro-touring theme. '69 Corvette-Kinsler EFI/T-56, widened TTII's in back, fender flares, L88 hood, sidepipes '69 Camaro-LS7 or EFI'd BBC/T-56, full AirRide suspension '66 Chevelle Sedan Delivery-Vortec 8100, Marc Nellis Chevy Rallies '64 Chevy Pickup-shortened frame and motor/tranny from '99 Silverado '67 El Camino-LS2/T-56

After reading your feedback and chatting things over my boss (a former project engineer) I believe I need to clarify what I was intending to offer. This will be a custom order business, no cookie-cutter layouts. The only stock I would have on hand at any given time would be the engraved material run in 4 to 6 foot lengths in the two offered heights. When placing an order, you would first select your pattern (cinder block, brick, cast concrete, etc.). Next, you would have to choose which wall height you would like: 4-inch (8 scale foot at 1/24th scale) for typical home garages or 8-inch (16 scale foot) for industrial/large motorsport operations. Price would be determined by the linear inch at each of these two wall heights. For example, if you wanted a 16 scale foot high by 20 scale foot long cinder block wall for a photo back drop you would place an order for 10 inches of cinder block wall at the 8-inch price point. A 20 scale foot by 20 scale foot home garage with cast concrete walls would require an order for 4 10-inch cast concrete walls at the 4-inch price point. You could then add features such as cut-outs for doors, windows, garage doors on any wall and exactly where you would like them and/or additional interior walls. A base, if requested, would also be cut at this time and my joining system added to ease assembly. Upon receiving an order, I would pull the engraved stock and cut it down to your specifications. Single walls would be cut off straight. Adjoining walls would be mitered and the joining system I'm working on added. This would then be shipped in kit form like any other model. There are people out there much more proficient at graphic art than I am and drawing programs are becoming increasingly more user-friendly so I'll let them handle the signage. Paint, assembly, accessorizing, etc. would be left up to the individual builder. By maintaining only the base stock, my hands-on time would be limited to loading raw material into the fixtures and starting programs. Once the program is started, I could "walk away" until the program ends and requires that the stock be flipped to engrave the other side or additional raw stock needs to be loaded. After an order is received, hands-on time would be what is necessary to cut to length and run the sub-routines for added features. That system seems to satisfy some of the concerns of eating into family time. Waiting to hear your input.

I just opened the kit about 10 minutes before I took off for work but according to the kit instructions it's a panhead. I didn't have time to verify with my references. My father-in-law has a pair of EVO's so I'll head over there this weekend to figure out which it's closer to.

Are all the motors the same? This version is a panhead but I was looking for an EVO. If they're all the same, I guess I'll head over to my father-in-law's garage and check his bikes to see what changes would have to be scratched up. TIA

As some of you may know, I've been looking for a BBC Hilborn-type manifold to do an EFI conversion on for a long time. It'll be going in my pro-touring '69 Vette that has been stalled on the bench for at least the last 3 or 4 years. As this is a model of my dream car nothing less than exactly what I had envisioned would do, hence the long pause. This intake was offered by Best Resin and according to my research is more likely a Kinsler though it was sold as a Hilborn by them. It's the split-port design which I can find no reference of Hilborn ever producing. I'm not sure of the source but I'm pretty sure it was 1/24th scale as I had to do quite a bit of trimming to get it to fit the Vette's block. Now that's its fit, I can add the fuel rails, injectors, wires and ram tubes. It'll sit under an airbox feeding off the L88 cowl-induction hood. Anyways, if anything it's a good excuse to play with my new camera I got over the holdiays. Canon S3 with SuperMacro and image stabilization, no more blurry macro shots! Getting crackin on this one again is one of my New Year's resolutions and thanks for looking.

I've been wanting to build a large motorsports garage diorama/display case for quite some time. Something along the lines of a scale 100' by 50' (4' by 2' in 1:1) building with 5 or 6 bay doors, a showroom, lifts, the works. I want to build it out of something durable (to survive future moves and curious kids) with scale correct thickness walls. From what I've seen, most of the pre-fab garage kits are made from thin plastic or resin and buying textured sheets from Plastruct/Evergreen to face a core of another material would be approaching prohibitively expensive. While weighing my options, a thought struck me. I work for a tool and die shop and spend most of my waking hours around CNC machines. One of those things could kick out the walls of a scale garage in 1/4" or 5/16" sheet in nothing flat. Now the chances of getting some after-hours time on a Mori would be around slim to none but Craftsman just put out a mini-CNC that'll handle plastic. Of course, reality set in about the time my wife told me I couldn't have a $1900 toy to build a garage for my other "toys". As marriage is an art form of compromise and negotiation, I countered with the prospect of making garages, displays, etc for others to offset the cost. Now in the "I'll think about it" phase, I'm throwing some feelers out to see if there's a market. With CNC, everything from the basic 1 or 2 bay garages up to the limits of the imagination could be offered in several different textures (cinder block, brick, cast concrete, stone, woodgrain) at a cost that I believe could certainly compete if not beat what's currently available while being scale correct in thickness and thus more sturdy. Good, bad or indifferent I'm looking for input. TIA.

Saw the commercial on TV over the weekend and thought if it can cut wood it'll cut plastic. I'd have a hard time convincing the wife to let me drop $1900 though. I just switched jobs to do quality for a tool and die shop a few months back and we do mostly CNC machining so I could handle the programming end of it. Big dreams man, big dreams Sears Craftsman CompuCarve http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?...UseBVCookie=Yes

We're expecting baby #3 any day now but I've known since my wife got pregnant that I was gonna have to considerably scale back any expectations of any real time on the bench for quite awhile. When I got back into the hobby about five years ago, I went on a buying spree picking up pretty much anything that even slightly piqued my interest. Of course, I made grandiose plans for each and every one and bought a lot of kits for no other reason that I needed this or that part for a kit bash. I kept up this torrid pace for a couple of years but never made much headway on the building side of things. For the first several years of our marriage, I worked 6 and 7 days a week so my wife could be home with the kids. The majority of the rest of my time, aka non-sleeping hours, was dedicated to being a father and husband (as it should be). At some point, my sons (now 5 and 3) ransacked my old hobby room. I'll never know the how or when it happened as it can be days, weeks or sometimes months between trips to the bench but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was absolutely disgusting and disheartening to see 30 or 40 kits worth of parts, trees, tires, decals, instructions sheets, boxes, etc. strung haphazardly across my hobby room floor. It took me nearly a year to bring myself to even step foot in there again. I almost quit the hobby in frustration. Lack of time, a huge mess to deal with, life and work changes all had taken there toll. Instead, I decided to clean house. I chose a half dozen or so projects that really got my juices flowing. I wrote up a detailed build sheet on each of those projects (kitbash pieces, aftermarket stuff, paint scheme and colors, what needed to be fabbed, etc.). Everything in my stash not needed to achieve these goals became fair game to find a new home. Over time, I've Ebay'd off the kits I could guarantee as complete (those that were still sealed and/or sealed in the box) or those that I've pieced together and know are all there. What's still left I'm sorting through to find logical groupings to put up as part/junk lots on the 'bay or to use as trade fodder to minimize what I need to buy for kitbashing purposes to finish those projects. To make a long story short, it took a disaster to make me realize that I had gotten in over my head as far as kit acquisition goes. Would I have liked to build every single kit I had purchased? Of course, but it was never a realistic expectation given the life constraints that must be lived within. I still find myself stopping into the hobby shop to have a peek and eventually I'll start buying again, however at a more measured pace. Sorry for the long rambling but it felt good to vent a little bit.

I put my vote in on the Nesco as I've had one for several years now. I'm pretty sure I got it on sale at Wal-Mart for around $30 a couple of years ago. I've never seen the extra trays but I'd love to have a set or two.

Does anyone know of a vendor offering up decals printed on an ALPS from your own custom artwork?? I've been wanting to get a sheet of logos printed and the only way I'm going to get them the way I need them is to have it printed with a white ink underlayment. I tried printing them on white decal paper but there are many very small open spaces in the artwork to cut out after they're printed. That leaves me with ALPS or screenprinting as my only options. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Not much time for building lately (back to 6 days/wk at work) but I've had a little time to play with my new Xara drawing software (snuck onto my work 'puter). Anyways, I couldn't get one design to print on my inkjet at home; the ink would just bead up on the paper. I finally got some laser decal paper and made it to Kinkos to get them done. Now my question is will the Tamiya TS clear I'm using damage the decals??? This is my first experience with laser printed decals. It's just Detail Master laser decal paper if it makes a difference. TIA

Wow, that first pic is amazing!!! Looks like someone got their hands on the shrink-ray gun.

What settings should I use on my printer?? No instructions on or in the package. I'm using a Canon MP500 inkjet and Testors decal paper if it makes any difference. TIA

You could give this stuff a try if you're looking for aluminum mesh. I ordered it from my local train guy but it's listed in the Walther's catalog. Aluminum mesh by Scale Scenics #652-3500 It's sold for small scale dioramas and is real expanded metal.

Great Googily Moogily!!!! That thing is every kind of BAD!!

Looking great Izzy, what color did you use on the interior?

Here's the new tank dropped down into it's location. Still have a little shaping to do on the new inner fender that's required to make it fit. In 1:1, it's a pretty tight fit between the firewall and the inner fender. Even after thinning the kit firewall almost paper-thin, I still had to add a little material to the inner fender and file out the kit inner fender well. It's still pretty rough right now but when I get done it'll be hard to tell it's been modified. No concerns about interference with the suspension/tires. TIA for looking.

Absolutely beautiful Bob!!!